Fire Over the World
George Hobson
The range of my work is very wide and includes lyrics of all sorts (nature poems extolling God’s creation, love poems, poems confronting the passage of time and aging, for example), as well as narrative poems (I like to tell stories) and lengthy epic-like compositions such as the harrowing evocation of the Armenian genocide in May Day Morning in Yerevan (I also have three poems that evoke the Rwandan genocide of 1994). I believe poetry must confront the darkness of the world as well as its beauty, but I do this within the redemptive framework of Christian faith. I am deeply engaged with the phenomenon of memory and of our movement, as human beings, through time and in/into eternity. Timelessness within time – eternity in time – is at the heart of my poetic vision.
Fire over the world
Fire over the world,
Our darkness breeding hell;
Under our smug well-
Being, hell-fire unfurled.
Our warrior race wields
Steel; we clash, we hate;
“Peace! Peace!” yields
Few gains; we rage: our fate.
Our fate it’s not. Our choice
Brings down hell. “You”, we cry,
“Are evil!” So we kill. We die.
Ah, but we could rejoice!
Rejoice in women’s beauty,
Not defile it; in man’s strength,
Not destroy it; of love, make duty’s
Pleasure; to great length
Go gladly for the other. But no,
We’re killers for whatever cause
Possesses us, whose laws
We fashion to define the foe.
We seek out foes to nail.
Darkness deepens round us, lit
By awful flames: the wail
Of women, men’s howls. The pit
Of hell yawns, devours. We die.
Over the world, under it, fire.|
In Beauty, a voice: “Why
Do you hate me? My desire
Is for you. I died to give
You life. I shared your night,
It’s mine too. So let me live
Inside you—I’ll be your light.”
Words echoing in our cave,
Words bouncing off our walls.
Whom will Beauty’s cry save?
Who will hear His calls?
Rev Dr George Hobson is a distinguished theologian and poet. In the current phase of his life, officially retired from professional duties as an Anglican priest, he is living with his wife Victoria in the department of the Lot in southern France. For more on George’s work see www.georgehobson.com.